What can local government ethics professionals learn from what has come out in <a href="http://www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C41679911215.PDF&quot; target="”_blank”">the
recent indictments</a> of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his
father, the city's
director of water and sewerage, Kilpatrick's CAO and CIO, and a city
contractor?<br>
<br>

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/image-consultants-role-local-governme…; target="”_blank”">My
last blog post</a> involved the <a href="http://www.bcerssite.org/index.html&quot; target="”_blank”">Baltimore Employees'
Retirement System</a> board calling in an image consultant to help

<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/image-consultants-role-local-governme…; target="”_blank”">My
last blog post</a> involved the <a href="http://www.bcerssite.org/index.html&quot; target="”_blank”">Baltimore Employees'
Retirement System</a> board calling in an image consultant to help

Things have changed. It used to be that the first thing you did when
you found out the local ethics commission was investigating you was
hire a lawyer (which is itself a change from the days when you found
out you were being investigated by the D.A. and handed him a bribe).<br>
<br>
In this era of the image and the consultant, the truly with-it (if that
term is still in use) government official turns to the image

<b>A Failure to Respond to an Ethics Complaint</b><br>
It's always interesting to see how many ways there are not to deal with
ethics complaints. When you think you've seen them all, a new one comes
out of nowhere.<br>
<br>
In this case, nowhere is Taylor, Michigan, a city of 65,000 outside

People in Alabama are falling over each other claiming that their
ethics reforms give the state the best, toughest ethics laws in the nation. But
when you take a closer look, some of them don't look all that good.<br>
<br>

<b>Referendum Requires Ethics Training and Increases Penalties</b><br>
I learned at the COGEL conference last week that a referendum passed in
New York City last month requires all city officials and
employees to receive conflict of interest training. The Conflicts of
Interest Board (COIB) does provide training, but officials and
employees are not required to take it. This change is extremely
valuable.<br>
<br>

At last week's COGEL conference, I learned about a judicial case
involving the Anne Arundel County (MD) Ethics Commission, which has
been going on for six years. <a href="http://mdcourts.gov/opinions/cosa/2009/2714s07.pdf&quot; target="”_blank”">A decision
of the Court of Special Appeals last November</a> is worth a look.

Chinese walls, that is, ways to separate an official from a matter as to which he has a conflict, are a perfect way to appear to be responsibly handling a
series of possible conflicts, but are these walls great or are they
window dressing? And even if the walls truly work, are they enough to
deal responsibly with a series of possible conflicts?<br>
<br>

<br>
The COGEL conference last week had an excellent panel on the revolving
door between government and business. One thing I learned is that the
first post-employment laws were passed in the 1850s and 1860s, and they
involved lawyers, a group that often argues that ethics laws should not
apply to them (in fact, in Pennsylvania, someone said, revolving door
laws cannot be applied to practicing attorneys). The idea of a
cooling-off period after government service originated in 1955, well